source link Many don’t know about the little town of source Drawbridge, a once thriving community located on the cusp of southern San Francisco Bay in what is now Fremont, California. It is now a ghost town sinking into San Francisco Bay.

essay on my family in japanese It didn’t take long for others to join him for some drinking, hunting, and fishing, and soon it became a regular train stop. By the 1880s, upwards of a thousand would come on weekends for the abundant hunting and fishing. Soon 10 stops a day was common for passenger trains up and down the track, which was the only way into town other than by boat.

help writing an essay By the 1920s, the town had reached its heyday, growing to about 90 buildings including a couple hotels and restaurants, many with wells and electricity. During prohibition, the town gained a reputation for having speakeasies, gambling, brothels, and heavily armed residents. The residents were split into two communities: The Protestants lived in North Drawbridge, and the Catholics resided in South Drawbridge. While there was quite a bit of feuding, they also had “tide parties” where residents would row to neighbors’ houses for socials at high tide.

source link In 1955 the trains no longer stopped in Drawbridge, and all but two last residents moved away. The last resident left around 1979.

click here It is now closed to the public, and hefty fines can be levied if caught there, however, people do go there all the time, mainly kids I think, looking for an adventure, gather relics, and to leave graffiti. A rave party was reportedly broken up there awhile back. The closest legal way to see Drawbridge (other than from a train) is trekking over two miles on the Mallard Slough Trail from the Alviso end (painted in ThirtyThree: Sin City) of Don Edwards Preserve.

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/graphics/ProjectTimeLapse/?june=how-to-write-a-compare-and-contrast-essay Reconnaissance
Drawbridge has been on my list from almost the start of this quest and I spent more time researching it than any other painting. Since it is closed to the public, and can be dangerous, I asked special permission from the Public Affairs Officer of the Wildlife Refuge to go paint it for a day, but the Manager of the Refuge turned me down. Although they were quite interested in my quest, the answer was eventually no. Time for Plan B.

Last Saturday I took a tour sponsored by the Wildlife Reserve and conducted by Ceal Craig, president of the San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society. After a historical presentation, the tour takes you via van to a viewpoint where you can see the remains across Coyote Slough. (If you are interested in a free tour, space is limited and you have to sign up, but do it early as they always sell out. Click here for more information.)

Here are a few pictures I took on the tour prior to going out and painting, using a zoom video camera to take some of these pictures– Click on a thumbnail to open up a larger picture and slide show***

View from the vantage point I painted from. You needed binoculars to really see much.

I used the closest viewable building as the main focus of interest in the painting.

Zoomed in view of Drawbridge.

Zoomed in view of Drawbridge.

From another viewpoint of Drawbridge. You can make out the words TESLA in the background just right of center.

From another viewpoint of Drawbridge.

There are plenty of other, better closeup pictures on the web, many taken by what I am guessing are trespassers. If interested, start here.

write when you get work Painting
Since it wasn’t legal to go into town, I did the next best thing and painted it from across Coyote Slough. This greatly limited what I could do with the composition, but had to go with what was practical. It would have been nicer to paint right in the town for a better composition, but I wasn’t interested in getting caught by the feds!

On painting day, rode my bike the over two miles on the dirt levy trail to the viewpoint. They recently built some informational displays and a park bench, which came in handy. To keep light weight, I took my mini Open Box M pochade box and just sat on the bench and painted. Not another soul was seen the entire time I was there. It was really windy, and had to constantly monitor my materials to make sure they didn’t blow into the slough!

enter site How great it was to be way out in the marshlands with only the sounds of the tide going out and an occasional waterfowl winging by! I probably spent as much time just sitting there soaking the environment as painting!

Here’s a few pictures on painting day– Click on a thumbnail to open up a larger picture and slide show***

The area is teeming with waterfowl.

Looking back over the levy trail I rode to the painting spot. The new Levi Stadium can be seen in the background on the left.

My bike with the painting equipment on the bench.

My pochade box on the bench.

Here’s a 180 panorama of the scene. The railroad trestle on the left replaced the old swing/drawbridge many years ago. Click on the picture to view a larger version–

Panorama of Coyote Slough.

Ghost City, 8×10, oil on board

It’s a little tough to paint what should be an expansive scene on an 8×10 canvas, but tried to include as much as I could without it looking too ‘busy’. In the back upper left is the entrance to Niles Canyon painted in Nine, Ten: Charlie Chaplin. The city of Fremont is also in the background, and we could see the new Tesla Plant with the naked eye. I made sure to include the train tracks on the left, as that is why the town is there. There is just a peek of Coyote Slough at the bottom which Coyote Creek empties into. This is the fifth painting in this quest of Coyote Creek as it is a major creek and one of the few which runs year round.

Although some have attributed this quote to Mark Twain, he probably didn’t say it. Anyone who has lived in San Francisco or visited during the summer agree with that old saying.

Much of the coldness can be attributed to the fog which rolls in almost daily during the summer months along much of the coastline of California. The frequency of fog is due to a particular combination of factors peculiar to the region. San Francisco is bordered on three sides by water. Morning sun heats the ground further inland with temperatures reaching into the 90’s and 100’s. The hot inland air rises and the heavier cold ocean air rushes in to replace it. This flow from the high to the low pressure zone pulls the marine layer through the Golden Gate passage and into the bay. The marine layer is basically a layer of fog which hangs out in the Pacific Ocean.

I painted 49 by the Docktown Marina in Redwood City. Docktown consists of about 60 floating houses which are not quite houseboats and not quite houses, but they do float on the water. Lately the marina’s longevity has come under a cloud and it’s days may be numbered as Redwood City would really like to get rid of it. Redwood City used to have three waterfront communities where people lived aboard their boats or in floating homes, and Docktown is the last that remains.

Docktown sits at the mouth of Redwood Creek, a 9.5-mile-long stream which starts in the Santa Cruz mountains, and flows through the towns of Woodside and Redwood City before discharging into San Francisco Bay.

Signs of Silicon Valley are all around. Lowlands are being converted to houses and condos, with high tech companies popping up all over. Oracle, the worlds second largest software company, is just down the road. Oracle software is used to store much of the information on the Internet.

Click on a thumbnail to open up a larger picture***

Docktown homes.

A view of Docktown from across the slough.

Some of the locals.

The basic scene I was painting.

My easel on a pedestrian bridge across Redwood Creek.

Although it was quite overcast when I got to Docktown, the fog and clouds quickly dissipated. I have been wanting to include more wildlife in some of these works, so painted a white heron which was scouting nearby. The sun was just starting to peek through the fog.

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The largest homeless camp in the United States is right in the heart of affluent Silicon Valley*. Situated just south and less than a mile away of downtown San Jose, there are up to 350 residents living in see url â€œThe Jungleâ€, as it is locally called. Just a few yards away, across Story Road, is the beloved kiddie amusement park and zoo, Happy Hollow, and is one long block from the city’s municipal ballpark and San Jose State University’s stadium. The Japanese Friendship garden painted in TwentySeven: Koraken is less than a block away.

The Jungle in essence is a city for the homeless on the banks of Coyote Creek. (Coyote Creek was previously painted in this quest at other stretches in Eleven: Christmas Day, Twelve: With the Los Gatos Elves, and ThirtySix: El Toro.) Driving by on Story Road, you would never notice the despair below under the trees as cars, buses, and minivans of families head to Happy Hollow Park and Zoo.

Most of the residents are San Jose locals. Snaking trails wind through trees and bushes, with Spanish-speaking sections and neighborhoods like Little Saigon, where Vietnamese residents have dug large rooms into steep hillsides. There are makeshift shelters, tents, hand-dug latrines, tree houses, piles of human waste, cast-off clothing, lots of shopping carts, car parts, and discarded food rots. There are cats and kittens, dogs large and small, chickens, ducks, even a bunny. There is a large drug culture in parts of the camp.

There are numerous other camps all over Santa Clara County, some at times get cleared and cleaned out, but The Jungle is entrenched. Santa Clara County has the dubious honor of having the fifth-highest homeless population in the nation. A report, released by the city of San Jose, found 7,361 homeless individuals around the county with 4,770 people identified in San Jose.

Many more news and other articles are available about The Jungle, a few are here, here, and here.

A number of government and private groups are helping. You can read about a few here, and here.

Here are some of my personal photos of The Jungle, albeit mainly around the perimeter–Click on a thumbnail to open up a larger picture and slide show***

Here is Coyote Creek by Happy Hollow Park just before it flows under Story Rd and through The Jungle.

Looking down into The Jungle from near Story Rd.

Looking down on Coyote Creek and The Jungle from an abandoned railroad bridge.

A new fence was recently built around parts of “The Jungle” with this ominous sign.

Painting The Jungle has been on my list almost from the beginning of this quest. Besides showing the beauty of the creeks in Santa Clara Valley, I wanted to show some of the grit along the waterways. I have reconnoitered the area several times, but never actually gone in. While doing research, a knowledgable friend strongly advised me not to go into it and do a painting by the creek. The area is lawless and not safe, including a lot of drug trafficking. Although groups of aid and other workers visit, I didnâ€™t really want to bother anyone to form a posse of bodyguards, so put on my scraggiest clothes (actually my normal plein air garb) and walked around parts of the perimeter and in a little ways to get a feel for the place, take pictures, and color notes, etc.

I spent as much as I could on-site gathering information, but this painting is not plein air, and is the first, and hopefully only non-plein air painting in this quest. I would have liked to paint right on the creek, and wanted to include it in my quest, so painted it alla prima (all at once) in my normal plein air style in the studio.

Duck blinds can be spotted around the south bay, and from what I can determine are for public use, first come, first served. There are also many duck clubs. To some, a duck club may seem nothing more than a mosquito-infested swamp inhabited by stealthy men in camouflage holding shotguns. But in the San Francisco Bay area, including Silicon Valley, duck hunting has been a bailiwick of established money for more than a century.Â Many of San Franciscoâ€™s prominent families have a duck club (or two) among their assets.